Tag: September

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Wednesday in a speech to French ambassadors that he wanted all 27 countries of the European Union to speak with “one voice” in September on the issue of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations General Assembly. (more)

The FBI, which is still investigating Blackwater’s Sept. 16 killing rampage in Baghdad, has determined that at least 14 of the 17 shootings were unjustified and in violation of deadly-force rules. The Justice Department is looking into whether to press charges, if it even has the authority, which means that Blackwater could very well get away with murder.

Jon Stewart charts the administration’s “been there, done that, be back later” approach to fighting the war in Iraq. Plus a look back on operational nomenclature, the September surprise and Ted Koppel’s giant head.

Rep. Mark Foley’s predations might be evidence of a Republican Party gone to seed, but don’t let it obscure the fact that Condoleezza Rice appears to have lied under oath about Al Qaeda attack warnings she received in advance of Sept. 11.

Stephen Colbert sank his teeth into the “Path to 9/11” controversy on Monday, shaming ABC’s truth-challenged drama: “What better way to commemorate a national tragedy than turning it into a miniseries?”

A satire of ABC’s “The Path to 9/11” has popped up on YouTube. It envisions how ABC would dramatize Vietnam, the San Francisco Earthquake and the Revolutionary War. Not gut-bustingly hilarious, but significant in terms of how quickly these kinds of things appear nowadays. (h/t: AMERICAblog)

The AP returns to the Sarasota, Fla., school where Bush learned the news of the 9/11 attacks while reading from a children’s book. “His face just started to turn red,” one student remembered. “I thought, personally, he had to go to the bathroom.” Watch it.

Watch the part of ABC’s undocu-drama “The Path to 9/11” in which Sandy Berger goes weak-kneed when presented with an opportunity to order the killing of bin Laden. DISCLAIMER: This never happened in real life, and is one of the most blatant falsehoods contained in the miniseries.

To commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, we have assembled a collection of the most memorable and compelling footage related to that day—some of it iconic and unforgettable, like the images of the planes crashing into the towers, some of it more below the radar, like Jon Stewart’s first show after the attacks.

To commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, we have assembled a collection of the most memorable and compelling footage related to that day—some of it iconic and unforgettable, like the images of the planes crashing into the towers, some of it more below the radar, like Jon Stewart’s first show after the attacks.

Harvey Keitel, who stars in ABC?s upcoming 9/11-themed miniseries, appeared on CNN?s ?Showbiz Tonight? to relate his own concerns over the project?s manipulation of history. When asked if a work derived from 9/11 held a special obligation to the truth, Keitel responded: ?Absolutely, you cannot cross the line from a conflation of events to a distortion of the event. No. Where we have distorted something we have made a mistake?and that should be corrected.?

Several progressive bloggers have set up an online clearinghouse dedicated to exposing the fabrications in ABC/Disney?s upcoming miniseries “The Path to 9/11.” It urges ABC/Disney to scrub the film of outright falsehoods, or else shelve the film completely.UPDATE # 1:

ABC is planning to air a six-hour ?docudrama? on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 that lays the lion?s share of the blame for the Sept. 11 attacks on President Clinton. The progressive blogosphere is in a rage—as evidenced by the satirical photo above—over perceived bias on the part of the filmmakers and ABC/Disney. (Check out the controversy.)

I (TD managing editor Blair Golson) have studiously avoided blogging about “The U.S. government planned 9/11” conspiracy theories because, frankly, they’re crap they strain credulity; no government it seems unlikely to the extreme that the government could keep a secret like that from leaking* (see editor’s note on the jump). But Time magazine has a good explanation of why 36% of people polled lend credence to these claims: We need grand theories to make sense of grand events, or the world just seems too random.

What if former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani wasn’t the hero everybody thought? What if, like Bush, Giuliani had ignored myriad pre-9/11 warnings about terrorism? What if he thus left the city ill-prepared to respond to such a disaster? That’s the provocative thesis of a new book written by two top-flight investigative journalists.

At his press conference today, the president came refreshingly (although just a tad belatedly) clean about the fact that Iraq played no part whatsoever in the Sept. 11 attacks. Watch it.
A howler from Bush: “Nobody?s ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack.” OK, maybe not in those words, but how ‘bout in these?

The N.Y. Times says “World Trade Center” marks a departure for filmmaker Oliver Stone in that the movie has no hint of a political agenda. It’s a “harrowing return to a singular, disastrous episode in the recent past and a refuge from the ugly, depressing realities of its aftermath.”

In their new book “Without Precedent,” 9/11 Commission Chairmen Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton discuss their frustration with the Pentagon and FAA, whose misstatements almost led to an investigation into possible deception.

In a 2003 interview with Ladies Home Journal, Bush told Peggy Noonan that during the late-night hours of Sept. 11, he and wife Laura were hustled around the White House in their bedtime clothes because it was thought a jet was going to crash into the building. “[T]he day ended on a relatively humorous note,” he said. “We got a laugh out of it.”“Bad taste” doesn’t really seem to do this justice.
(h/t: Daou Report. Also: full-text interview.)

Bowing to a Freedom of Information request, the U.S. government has released a video of what is apparently (thanks, reader Lorenzo) American Airlines Flight 77 slamming into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. The group that made the FOIA request did so to dispel conspiracy theories.